Tannishblog

The cost of war comes through in a multitude of ways. New Orleans should know this now, and will be reminded every day for years. Remember No Child Left Behind? It seems the escalation cost of depopulating Iraq has left our schools unfunded on a government mandate brought to you by George Warmonger Bush himself. Even our infrastructure is suffering. As example, I ask if any of my dear readers have driven in a large metropolis lately. How are the roads?

In the Northeast, the power grid is so bad that last weekend’s storm blacked out power for a quarter million people (sic). I remember the last time power outages occurred in the same region. During the seventies, the Carter years, hot summers caused a drain on the grid from excessive use of air conditioners. Then, people hollered at the government to help restore the aging grid. They did just that, although it took a couple years. But there war no trillion-dollar war going on in those days; the Federal government, despite a recession, had the money to help out its citizens.

The Medicaid debacle also is a sign of the costliness of the war. While trillions of dollars are funneled into a black hole of expendable munitions and corrupt restructuring within the war zone, the elderly and the soon-to-be elderly are loosing benefits they have counted on all during their working careers. To have to suffer eleventh-hour restructuring of a plan they have literally been banking on, one that they would have been able to compensate for had they known of the risks, is unconscionable.

Who pays for war: Everyone who dies by war along with their families and friends pays? Everyone injured by war and their families and friends. Every soldier on any side of the conflict, who, through skill and fortune, manage their way home, pays for war in the way their lives and outlooks irrevocably change. Nations pay for war, both the entities and the people who comprise the nations, both the decision makers and the innocents, pay for war through taxation and national debt. People pay for war, in their heartsickness, despair and shame.

People pay a price in their powerlessness to stop war once it has begun; for once leaders take a violent stance against a nation, backing down and admitting to their mistakes is unmentionable. For a politician to admit wrong is career suicide; and no politician in recent memory would give up the power and the perks of their chosen career. Once the mistake is made, therefore, all of America must go along. Nothing short of civil war can stop this foolishness.

The cost of war is too high. In the staggering price tag of high tech warfare, in the incalculable cost of ruined lives, in the thousand tiny needs left untended, war bankrupts the spirit of people, of families and of whole nations. No one can afford this disease any longer.

War Must End!